Halina Rosenthal, 73, a Leader In Efforts to Save Landmarks, Dies

By GRACE GLUECK

Published: April 1, 1991

Halina Rosenthal, a leader in promoting zoning laws and landmarks legislation throughout New York City, died yesterday afternoon at her home in Manhattan. She was 73 years old.

She died of cancer, her husband, the sculptor Tony Rosenthal, said.

Mrs. Rosenthal was president of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District, a preservationist group she helped found to monitor compliance after the district's 1981 designation by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

This month, she was to receive the Doris C. Freedman award from Mayor David N. Dinkins. The award is given each year to the person who has done the most for the arts in the city. In February, she received the Historic Districts Council's 1991 Landmarks Lion Award in recognition of her efforts for preservation. Born in Warsaw

Mrs. Rosenthal, a small friendly woman noted for her cordiality in the thick of debate, nevertheless described herself as a "hellion" when it came to pursuing measures she believed in. She worked to defeat plans for the expansion of the Whitney and the Guggenheim museums, and more recently opposed a proposal to place newsstands on Fifth Avenue.

Over the last 18 years, she supported landmark designation for scores of buildings. She also played an important role in zoning that prohibited structures of more than six stories on the midblocks between avenues outside the Upper East Side Historic District.

Mrs. Rosenthal was born in Warsaw and grew up in Cannes, where she spent her childhood at a Catholic convent. At the end of World War II, she met her husband, then a lieutenant in the United States Army, while attending a sculpture course he was teaching at an Army school in Biarritz in France.

Her interest in preservation began in 1973 upon the couple's purchase of a house on East 73d Street in Manhattan, when she founded the 73d Street Block Association for the purpose of planting trees.

A funeral will be held on Thursday at 11 A.M. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, at 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.